The Last Tudor Page 15

  “Oh, Elizabeth doesn’t care!” I say. “She has no plans for me. She delights in having no plans for me. She doesn’t think twice about me.”

  “Well, that’s just what Ned said!” Janey says triumphantly. “And he said that while both of you were free, there was no reason that you should not be in each other’s company, and he bowed and left, just like that.”

  “Just like that?” I repeat.

  “You know how he bows and walks away.”

  He moves like a dancer, light on his feet yet with his shoulders set, like a man to be reckoned with. I know just how he bows and walks away.

  GREENWICH PALACE,

  SUMMER 1559

  At the end of my visit, I pack up my pets, Mr. Nozzle the monkey, Ribbon the cat, and Jo the puppy, into their little traveling baskets, and go back to court to attend on the queen and to live with my mother and Mary in smaller rooms than we had under Queen Mary, furnished with the second-best goods that the groom of the chambers has picked out for us, since we are no longer favorites. My mother makes Mr. Nozzle live in a cage and complains if Ribbon tears at the colorless tapestries. I say nothing about Ned and he does not come to court as he promised he would. There is not a doubt in my mind that his mother is keeping him at Hanworth. If I were recognized by Elizabeth as I should be—as her cousin and her heir—his mother would be quick enough to encourage our love. But as it is, she is fearful of the future with my cousin on the throne. Elizabeth has no family feeling, and she is doing her best to reassure the papists that she has no need for a Protestant heir.

  My mother is ill and sometimes withdraws from court altogether. Mary goes with her to Richmond. There are no struggles for precedence behind Elizabeth; my mother has lost all heart for the fight.

  The only person who singles me out at all is the Spanish ambassador, Count de Feria, and he is still so charming and so admiring and so warm that I cannot resist confiding in him. I tell him that I think I will never be happy in England while Elizabeth is queen, and he says—so invitingly!—that I should go to Spain with him and the countess, where they will introduce me to the families of all the handsome noblemen who have gone home with Philip. He tells me that there is a new treaty between England and France and the young Mary Queen of Scots has been cheated by her royal French family in order to get peace. She will never be allowed to press her claim to the English throne again. She is discounted. I am the only heir to England.

  I laugh—for how could I ever go to Spain? But I promise him that I will always take his advice, that he is my only friend, and that I shall marry no one without confirming my choice with him. But I am not so indiscreet as to tell him that I have already chosen.

  NONSUCH PALACE,

  SURREY, SUMMER 1559

  The absence of Ned from court goes on and on, and now I hear that he is said to be unwell and has to stay with his mother to be nursed. They are a very sickly family. I don’t think Janey has been well since the day I met her, but she has never let it stop her attendance at court before. I would have thought that nothing could have been better for them both than traveling with the court on progress—riding every day and in clean air. I am sure that would be the best thing for them. I am afraid that his mother is trying to keep Ned from me, and this is so terribly unfair on me as I have done nothing to displease her or him. It is all the fault of Elizabeth, whose bad treatment of me makes everyone avoid me.

  She persecutes me in a dozen small ways. I get poorer rooms than I should; I take precedence in processions but she does not favor me in private. I am not invited to draw pretty gowns from the royal wardrobe—she never gives me anything. Ladies-in-waiting are paid a small fee and make their fortunes from gifts and favors; but I never get anything from Elizabeth and nobody is ever going to pay me for an introduction as it is well known that she never talks with me.

  I take a small satisfaction that when the court goes on progress, Elizabeth has to order the royal wardrobe to issue gowns to all her ladies, and of course, I wear them better than anybody. Her great flirt, the master of horse Robert Dudley, may try to forget that I was once his sister-in-law, but he still sees that I am mounted well on a strong hunter. Elizabeth may not favor me, but she cannot conceal that I am the most beautiful girl at court, exquisite when I am dancing, striking when I am riding. My stepgrandmother, who was a famous beauty in her day when she was the young wife of my grandfather Charles Brandon, kisses me on my forehead and says that I am far and away the prettiest girl at court, just like she was at my age. We travel for some weeks and then we go to Nonsuch Palace, which is a fairy-tale place set in beautiful grounds beside the river. The widower Henry FitzAlan, the Earl of Arundel, owns the palace and remembers his duty to the family of his first wife, my aunt, and brings me forward in all the entertainments he has laid on for the court. When Ned Seymour and Janey finally join the court, they find me dancing in the masques and leading the hunt on my new horse, at the very center of the summertime entertainments.

  The daily rhythm of court life brings Ned to my side at chapel and breakfast, hunting and dinner, dancing and playing cards. Every day the court plans and performs a new event. My uncle Arundel has organized plays and masques, dances and picnics, races and tournaments. Robert Dudley is everywhere, with little touches of pretty ceremonies, extra celebrations. He is at the center of everything and nobody can take their eyes off him. He is a man restored to wealth and favor and he has the golden sheen of success on him. Elizabeth the queen is openly, obviously, shamelessly besotted with him. She cannot stop herself looking for him; her face lights up when she sees him. She is drawn across the room to him. I can see them look for each other, and see no one else. I think only I fully understand this. I know what she is feeling, because it is the same for me.

  In the council room of the palace the senior lords, especially the old ones, call Privy Council meetings while the court is at play. There are constant emergencies, and messengers from parliament come every day urging her to marry Philip of Spain’s cousin, or the French prince: someone—anyone!—to give her a powerful ally and the chance of a son and heir. But Elizabeth rides all day neck and neck with Robert Dudley and dances with him all night, and any woman at court could tell the council that she does not even hear them. Helpfully, she agrees that she must be married, that the safety of the kingdom requires a great foreign consort, and the future of the kingdom must be secured by an heir, but her dark eyes follow Robert Dudley round the room as he goes from one beautiful girl to another but always ends up at her side.

  Everyone is watching this courtship, and in the heady atmosphere of a court where the queen is openly, madly in love with a married man, everyone is free to flirt and even steal away and kiss. The older men and advisors who are so bad-tempered and grave, the older women who are so insistent on modesty and always hark back to how things used to be, are simply ignored when the Queen of England rides out with her horse shoulder to shoulder with the man they are beginning to whisper is her lover, their hands hidden, entwined, as they ride home.

  Certainly no one is watching me, no one is watching Ned. We meet in Janey’s bedroom when she is too ill to get up from her bed. I am there to care for her; he is a good brother, visiting his sister. As she lies on her pillows and smiles sleepily on the two of us, we sit in the window and hold hands and whisper. We meet in every corner and doorway around the court for an exchange of half a dozen words and a brush of his kiss on my hand, on my neck, on the sleeve of my gown. When he passes me in the gallery, he catches at my fingers; when he plays a lute and sings a love song, he glances first at me, as if to say: these words are for you. We play cards together with Janey and my aunt Bess, now Lady St. Loe, in the evening, and we dance together when they call for partners. Everyone knows that Ned Seymour always partners Lady Katherine. Nobody else even asks me to dance, none of the girls flutter at Ned. Even the old ladies at court—his mother, my mother, and their sharp-eyed friends—have to observe what a pretty couple we make, so tall and so fair with royal
connections on both sides.

  What nobody sees is that when the dancing is over, we go to the corner of the great hall and his hand comes around my waist and he turns me towards him as if we are still dancing and he might hold me close.

  “Katherine, you are my sweetheart,” he whispers. “I am mad for you.”

  His touch makes me dizzy. I think I will faint but he holds me up. I let him put his hand under my chin; I allow him to turn my face up to his for a kiss. His lips are warm and urgent, and he smells deliciously of clean linen and orange water. He buries his face in my neck, and I feel him nibble the lobe of my ear. I cling to him, so that I feel him down the length of my body, his strong arms, his broad chest, his hard lean thigh against me.

  “We have to marry,” he says. “It is a jest no longer.”

  I can’t nod for his mouth is on mine. He releases me for a moment and I put my hand on the back of his neck to pull him back into the kiss.

  “Marry me?” he says as his mouth comes down again.

  HAMPTON COURT PALACE,

  SUMMER 1559

  Álvaro de la Quadra, the new Spanish ambassador, comes striding down the garden path in his sweeping bishop’s robes to bring me the news, as if we are friends and conspirators.

  “Thank God I found you! The King of France is dead!” he says.

  “My lord,” I say quietly. I am not as confident with him as I was with Count de Feria. He seems to think that we have an agreement, as if he has inherited me from the previous ambassador, an alliance rather than a liking.

  “God bless him,” I say. “But I thought he was just injured jousting?” I am walking down the gravel path towards the allée of yew trees, with Janey leaning on my arm. Ned is going to meet us here, as if by accident.

  “No! No! Dead! Dead!” says Ambassador de la Quadra, completely ignoring Janey and taking both my hands. “They have kept vigil beside his bed in vain. They have done everything they could, but nothing could save him. He is gone, God preserve and keep him. His son, little Francis, is king and your cousin Mary will be queen.” He lowers his voice. “Think what this means to you!”

  I am thinking. I had no idea that the French king was so seriously injured. Men are hurt all the time in the joust, but what jouster kills his king? The French court will be in an uproar and he will be succeeded by his son, Francis II. This makes my cousin Mary Stuart queen twice over. She was already Queen of Scots, now she will be Queen of France. Her importance has doubled, trebled, exploded. Now she is queen of a huge country that is determined to grow greater. Now the French king himself will support the claim of his wife to the throne of England, with the French army behind him. Every papist in this country will prefer Catholic Queen Mary to Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Many more would say that she has been the true heir all along. She is the granddaughter of Margaret, the Scots queen who was Henry VIII’s sister, and her first husband the Scots king. Unlike Elizabeth, she is undeniably legitimate, royal on both sides, and more than anything else, she will have the great might of France behind her.

  “Queen of France and Scotland,” I say thoughtfully. There she is, a girl no better born than I, not named in Henry VIII’s will like me; but she is queen of two countries before she is twenty-one.

  “And so everything changes again,” the ambassador says to me quietly, taking my arm and leading me from Janey, who turns back for the palace, waving me away with my grand friend.

  “I don’t see why,” I say. “And I should go back inside with Janey Seymour.”

  “Because the new French queen’s Guise kinsmen will be eager for her to take her throne in Scotland and push back the reformed religion. Because they will encourage her to make her claim for the English throne. They won’t care about peace with England like the old French king; they want to rule Scotland and invade England from the south and the north.”

  Really, he is too much for me, and I am afraid of his quiet voice, which weaves an argument thread by thread like a snare. “But this is nothing to do with me, Your Excellency. I don’t see why you come running to tell me.”

  He smiles as if this is news that will make me happy. “I will send you word,” he whispers. “And we will come for you. An entourage will come for you.”

  “What?” I ask, for this is completely unexpected. “What entourage?”

  He smiles at me as if we have some long-standing secret agreement, and he says that my moment will come. “We will release you,” he says, “from the burden of your life here.”

  Thank God that Ned steps quickly from a side path and then nearly jumps back again when he sees the ambassador. I say loudly: “Here is my friend Janey Seymour’s brother come to fetch me to her. Your Excellency must excuse me,” and I dash to Ned, who openly clutches at my hand. He waits only for the ambassador to bow and leave us before taking me in his arms and kissing me.

  “Ned, what are they thinking of?” I demand wildly. “He says they are going to release me from the burden of my life? Are they going to kill me?”

  “They’re planning to kidnap you and marry you to a Spanish heir,” Ned says tightly. “When I saw him with you then, I thought he might be persuading you to go with him. I heard it from someone just back from Madrid. It’s talked about all over Europe. They want a Spanish ally on the throne of England again. Someone they can trust. The old French king is dead and the Spanish won’t tolerate the new French queen as the heir to England. They won’t allow France to stretch her borders any more. They will back you against Queen Mary of Scots as the heir of England, and force Elizabeth to name you.”

  “I can’t do anything about that.” I give a frightened little moan. “Elizabeth has to choose me of her own will. I can’t make her. And I can’t be the enemy of France! They can’t call me that. I can’t be the Spanish-favored heir for England against my cousin the Queen of France. Why don’t they see that I can’t do anything?”

  He shakes his head, looking grim. “No. It’s worse than that. They don’t think that they can persuade Elizabeth to name you as heir, and they don’t think she can hold the country against a French invasion for Mary. They won’t allow a French queen on the throne of England. The plan is that they’ll take you, and declare you as the true heir, and invade to put you on the throne.”

  I give a little scream. “Ned! They can’t make me do that!”

  “If only your mother would speak to Elizabeth! If only Elizabeth would declare you as her heir; if only we could marry, I would make you safe.”

  “I won’t marry a Spaniard,” I gabble. “I won’t! I won’t! I’ll only marry you.” I cling to him and I am distracted at once by his arms around me, his kisses on my face, the warmth of his mouth going down my neck. “Oh, Ned,” I whisper. “We can’t wait any longer. This changes everything. Don’t let the Spanish take me. I will be your wife. I won’t be forced to the throne like Jane. I won’t die like her without ever being loved.”

  “Never,” he says. “They’re all as bad as each other, queen and Spanish ambassador, your mother and mine. All they think about is the throne. They don’t think about us at all. We were born for each other, we have to be together.”

  I melt against him; I cannot care for the consequences. I want to live, I want to be loved, I want to be his wife. Ned gives a little groan and pulls me down to sit in an arbor. I press forward on him, he fumbles with his breeches, I lift my skirts like a whore in Southwark. I don’t care. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to die young without love. I don’t want to go another moment without him. He pulls me towards him and I gasp with the sudden pain that is such a joy, and then I gasp again for the flood of pleasure, and then I sigh, my face buried in his shoulder, and I am overwhelmed with the sensation and I am blind and deaf to anything but our own hushed panting and then a long deep sigh and silence.

  We can be together for only a moment. As soon as I realize where I am, what I am doing, I have to scramble off him, take a snatched kiss, and dash back to my room. I change my dress as fast as possible, hurrying
my women with the laces on my sleeves, the slow tying of my bodice, snapping at my maid as she pins my hood on my rumpled golden hair, and I get to Elizabeth’s rooms at a half run and join her court at the back, hoping that no one has seen that I am late.

  Her dark gaze sweeps the rooms, like a peregrine falcon looking for prey, halts at my blushing face, comes back to me. “Ah, Lady Katherine,” she says, though she has not singled me out for months. I bob a shallow curtsey, swallowing down my fear. I am beloved of a great man, I am a Tudor. We are betrothed. This is more than she can say for sure.

  “I see you do not trouble yourself to be on time,” she remarks. “I did not see you in chapel either.”

  All of her ladies shrink back from the royal bad temper, making an avenue of gowns between me and the queen, and everyone looks towards me. I see Sir William Cecil’s tired face, irritable with impatience at the distraction. He is Elizabeth’s great advisor, and it tries his exhausted patience when she squabbles with her ladies when there is so much for her to do in the kingdom. I see Robert Dudley, who looks at me as if we are strangers. I see my aunt Bess St. Loe. She glares at me, as if she wishes I would behave better, and I see Mary’s little face half-hidden among the maids-in-waiting, and her grimace at my discomfort.

  I think how faithless they all are. My sister was a queen, and I am five minutes late to Elizabeth’s presence chamber because I have been meeting with a man who loves me, a good man, who will defend me from the enemies of the kingdom, and they behave as if I am a naughty schoolchild and this bastard claimant can scold me.

  I curtsey again, biting my tongue. “I am sorry, Your Majesty,” I say as sweetly as I can.

  “Were you meeting the Spanish ambassador in a hidden place?” she asks.

  William Cecil raises his eyebrows at her indiscretion. De la Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, at the back of the room, bows blandly, as if to say—not at all.